News Item: ni0074-11

March 17, 2011

Starving CFTC of Funding Puts Billions at Risk: Gensler

By Christopher Doering and Charles Abbott

The chairman of the U.S. futures regulator told lawmakers he was sympathetic to their efforts to rein in spending, but warned it would be a mistake to withhold funding from the agency and could put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is writing dozens of regulations to implement the Dodd-Frank law, which was enacted last July and gives the agency oversight of the $600 trillion global swaps market. Most rules have not been finalized.